Memory of St. Ireneus, bishop of Lyon and martyr (130-202); he went to France from Anatolia to preach the Gospel. Read more
Memory of St. Ireneus, bishop of Lyon and martyr (130-202); he went to France from Anatolia to preach the Gospel.
Reading of the Word of God
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I am the good shepherd,
my sheep listen to my voice,
and they become
one flock and one fold.
.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
James 4, 1-6
Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?
You want something and you lack it; so you kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. It is because you do not pray that you do not receive;
when you do pray and do not receive, it is because you prayed wrongly, wanting to indulge your passions.
Adulterers! Do you not realise that love for the world is hatred for God? Anyone who chooses the world for a friend is constituted an enemy of God.
Can you not see the point of the saying in scripture, 'The longing of the spirit he sent to dwell in us is a jealous longing.'?
But he has given us an even greater grace, as scripture says: God opposes the proud but he accords his favour to the humble.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia
Where do wars and fights come from? James in the first verses of chapter four of his Letter that deals with enmity, says it well. The author addresses several Christian communities. In doing so, he offers to all Christians an inner exhortation from which he draws important general consequences. The letter deals with violent relationships among people that James describes especially in the first verses by using a language taken from war. His concern is pressing because he claims that violence grows mainly in the heart and consequently is manifested externally. The initial question posed to the community of brothers and sisters is about violence within the members of the same community. The first four verses are directed to the issue and origin of violence. Central to these verses is the reason stated in the sentence: "You engage in disputes and wars." Why is there violence even among brothers and sisters of the same community? This is the great concern of a man who is trying to penetrate the heart of his brothers and sisters in order to identify the origin of feelings and attitudes that are exactly the opposite of fraternal life. The problem of wars and enmities is inner rather exterior: it lies in the "cravings that are at war within you." James refers to very concrete fights and disputes in the communities of his readers and roots them in the cravings of men and women as they disturb them inwardly. Cravings are strong and uncontrollable desires. James unveils an inner fight within the community related probably to a desire to dominate others. James underlines the fact that it is a harsh clash, and compares it to wars fought with weapons. Indeed there are wars that grow in the hearts. These wars, do not have any positive result. Twice the author underlines the total failure of any attempt to impose oneself through violence, even if he does not explain the reason: you desire and "do not have it;" you covet and "cannot obtain." The lust for dominion, command, and role does not lead to any result. No fight, no matter how bitter and determined, leads to the expected result seems to say James, for those who live fighting others do not even know how to ask for good things; those how fight against others do not have acquired the humility to pray, and when they ask, they do not know how to ask: "You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly in order to spend what you get on your pleasures." There is a deep and spiritual unity between humility and prayer that places human beings, in all their weakness, in front of God and gives them the ability to live peacefully without lusting for possession and dominion. Those who do not live in peace should ask themselves whether they truly live in a spiritual way. For those who do live in such a way are friends of the world and enemies of God. We need to purify our hearts and trust the Spirit creator who can generate in humble men and women his renewing grace. Humility belongs to those who are friends of God and do not live fighting others. God will give the final grace to his friends, a grace that is even "greater" than the spirit poured into human beings at the moment of creation: it will be the gift at the end of times as it was the gift at the beginning.
Prayer is the heart of the life of the Community of Sant'Egidio and is its absolute priority. At the end of the day, every the Community of Sant'Egidio, large or small, gathers around the Lord to listen to his Word. The Word of God and the prayer are, in fact, the very basis of the whole life of the Community. The disciples cannot do other than remain at the feet of Jesus, as did Mary of Bethany, to receive his love and learn his ways (Phil. 2:5).
So every evening, when the Community returns to the feet of the Lord, it repeats the words of the anonymous disciple: " Lord, teach us how to pray". Jesus, Master of prayer, continues to answer: "When you pray, say: Abba, Father". It is not a simple exhortation, it is much more. With these words Jesus lets the disciples participate in his own relationship with the Father. Therefore in prayer, the fact of being children of the Father who is in heaven, comes before the words we may say. So praying is above all a way of being! That is to say we are children who turn with faith to the Father, certain that they will be heard.
Jesus teaches us to call God "Our Father". And not simply "Father" or "My Father". Disciples, even when they pray on their own, are never isolated nor they are orphans; they are always members of the Lord's family.
In praying together, beside the mystery of being children of God, there is also the mystery of brotherhood, as the Father of the Church said: "You cannot have God as father without having the church as mother". When praying together, the Holy Spirit assembles the disciples in the upper room together with Mary, the Lord's mother, so that they may direct their gaze towards the Lord's face and learn from Him the secret of his Heart.
The Communities of Sant'Egidio all over the world gather in the various places of prayer and lay before the Lord the hopes and the sufferings of the tired, exhausted crowds of which the Gospel speaks ( Mat. 9: 3-7 ), In these ancient crowds we can see the huge masses of the modern cities, the millions of refugees who continue to flee their countries, the poor, relegated to the very fringe of life and all those who are waiting for someone to take care of them. Praying together includes the cry, the invocation, the aspiration, the desire for peace, the healing and salvation of the men and women of this world. Prayer is never in vain; it rises ceaselessly to the Lord so that anguish is turned into hope, tears into joy, despair into happiness, and solitude into communion. May the Kingdom of God come soon among people!
For the sick, in memory of the dead, for peace
